i checked the weather for today. for cambodia it says that it is 95 degrees and feels like 109. blech.
before i left vientiane, i went to the national museum. unfortunately, the exhibits that were in english consisted of the stuff i wasn't much interested in. namely, fossils and ceramic pots. when i got to the more recent history it was all in french and lao. but, they did have some interesting pictures around the time of the vietnam war. each one included the label (the only thing in english) "the american imperialists and their puppets." it was one of the first hints i got that laos is actually still communist.
anyway. moving on. so i hopped a bus down to the four thousand islands in the south of laos, on the mekong river. the glorious thing about traveling alone is that you have absolutely no say as to who sits next to you. so it will probably be the tallest, broadest human being on earth who has no sense of personal space and thinks that your seat belongs to him. also, he will fall asleep on you, crushing you against the window. just a warning. it's a proven fact. careful on those buses people.
so, after a wonderful night of no sleep i hopped in a little wooden boat and was off to my island bungalow!


yes. my bungalow.

this particular island has no electricity yet. so basically what you do there is hang around in a hammock all day fanning yourself and reading. oh, and waiting to watch the sunset from said hammock.


my evening view.

just before sunset you can go out biking or walking and catch some of the local scenery, which consists mostly of buffalo and rice paddies.


buffalo in a rice paddy. 2 for 1.


paddy


again, a paddy.

but it really really is too hot. and there are no fans or a/c to escape to. so most people glue themselves to their hammocks and wait for the bakery man to bike by and deliver you cinnamon buns and donuts. and sometimes nature drops itself into the mix just to say hi.


it was in my room. the body was at least the size of my thumb.

i totally wimped out and had the man who ran the place take care of it for me. but i still had dreams about spiders on me all night. turns out it was just ants and mosquitos.
so after a few days of sweating and fretting over the spider and it's inevitable revenge i decided that i needed to get out of laos. though, i have to say i was sad to leave it. i mean, the people there are wonderful. they say hi. just to say hello. they don't even necessarily want anything from you. same is true in cambodia too. especially the kids. they all run around naked (just the little ones) and waving and giggling and running away when you wave back. in thailand you dont even see the kids...
anyway. so i changed my money to dollars for cambodia. it seems ridiculous, but having a wallet full of dollars overwhelmed me. well, i suppose $50 isnt exactly full. but it was strange to have my own money again. and it has changed since i left. i mean, where did all these colors come from on all our bills. it was pretty exciting to think that i would be dealing in a currency that i understood and wouldn't have to do any conversion math with every time i wanted to buy a coke. but at the same time it made me sad because it reminded me of just how close i am to going back to america.
moving on. so, yeah. they use dollars and local money here in cambodia. the atms will only give you dollars. even the locals use them. but there is no change, so far that you get local bills.
the bus to cambodia was undoubtedly the worst i have had since africa. it was a minivan with five more people than seats. i mean, there aren't exactly aisles or anything to accomodate the extras. so three people rode on the roof. for 15 hours.
the next day was the beginning of the cambodian new year. in the villages here and in the surrounding countries the new year lasts for three days and is just a big water fight. people throw water and talcum powder on each other in the streets. but apparently in phnom penh everyone leaves the city and those who stay don't want to get mussed. there, everything just shuts down and nothing happens. big disappointment. i mean, i ziplocked all my stuff for nothing! so while everyone was sleeping through the heat i rented a scooter and had the roads to myself for a day. i took myself to the khmer rouge sites. turned out to be a really intense day. first there was tuol sleng (also known as s-21), the prison in phnom penh. of everyone who went there, only 7 lived. it was an old high school. but now you walk through and see the cells and shackles. and there is still blood on the floor and splattered on the ceilings. and pictures. mug shots of their prisoners. including babies... so after that i went to the next logical place, the killing fields. it is where the khmer rouge brutally killed people and threw them in mass graves. the first thing you see there is a tower of over 8000 skulls. and as you walk through the place there is still clothing all over the place from the victims. i teared up a bit. i couldnt help it. a really intense day.
so the next day i needed a bit of levity. it came in the form of visiting the royal palace. there is a pagoda with an emerald buddha and a silver floor (though i found the floor unimpressive and disappointing). and there are beautiful buildings all over the grounds.


example of what one might consider a beautiful building

and there was a gift from napoleon as well.


what?

i mean come on napoleon! it looks like a terrible rusted shack that you might see at universal studios. no wonder they didnt like the french. it's a pretty lame gift.
having seen the sights of the capital i moved on to siem reap. it means "siamese defeated" and it is fairly close to thailand (siam). classy. but what they have here are the temples of angkor. they are almost 1000 years old and many of them have been taken back over by the jungle. i dont have much to say about them, but here are some pictures.









yes, those are trees growing through the temples. pretty cool, but one day was enough for me and my limited enthusiasm for antiquities.
and that brings us up to now! so, after somewhat too short of a time in cambodia i am off again for thailand. and you know what that means? it means i am booking a flight home this week. i'll be sure to let you know the details when i do.
ta!

i suppose that since i am nearing the end of this trip, i am nearing the end of this blog. so i guess that means i should do a few last posts before i touch down in the states again, eh? since i last updated i travelled up to the north of thailand. without too much to do i decided to try my hand at riding a real motorcyle (not the wimpy little scooters. too easy). so i splurged and got a honda phantom.


my bike

after i drove around in circles inside the city for about an hour trying to figure out how the hell to get past the moat (yes, a real live water moat) and out into the world i headed up into the hills. part of the reason i couldnt find my way out of the city and into the hills is that the air quality in thailand rivals that of bangkok (good luck with that, atheletes). so i spent all day cruising around the hills because a) they are beautiful and b) they are about 10 degrees cooler than town.


rest stop


dork

i was hoping to get away from the tourist trap that seems to be most of thailand and see some more rural, real life type villages. and i thought i would succeed. i'd drive around for half an hour and not see any other tourists, then bam! "Hmong village" aka place where the tourists all go in big buses to buy overpriced fake souveniers. this is kind of why i decided against going on a trek. i hear that the hill tribes have been commercialized on and exploited as attractions. that, and i hate walking up mountains in the heat.
my motorcycle diaries fantasy over, it was time to head to laos. i travelled up to the area known as the golden triangle because it is where burma (myanmar, or whatever) thailand and laos all meet. the border up there basically consists of a river. so my border crossing was done by speedboat. from there it was a boat trip down the mekong river to get into some sort of civilization and out of the jungly mountains. now, you can take the speedboat, which distributes helmets when you get on board and flies down the river in six hours or you can take the slow boat which carries with it a much lower probability of death. as much as i hated the sound of a slow boat, i opted for it, as did most of my fellow travellers.


our boat looked like this, but with people, not bags of grain


from inside the boat

on a slow boat you have a lot of time to talk with your fellow passengers and, incidentally i have been running into them in every town since. really makes my trip seem unique... but it is fun to point them out as the "drunk ones" or the "old canadians" or "those girls whose names i forgot." and some of them ended up being really fun travel partners as well.
anyway. the slow boat went down the mekong for two days through great river landscapes. though i must say, when you are sitting on a board four inches wide for that long, the scenery becomes secondary and loses its charm. in retrospect though:


pak bang, the town we stopped in for the night

the boat took us to an old french colonial town on the river called luang prabang. one of the first things i noticed is how nice the people here are. i suppose they havent been destroyed by nasty travellers yet. anyway, back to our little colonial town. mostly what you do there is wander around looking at more temples and spending a lot of money. but it was a cute town.


stairs and stairs and stairs


temple, again


buddha, again


nothing special, just thought it was pretty

i went, along with a couple of my fellow boat travellers (jason and loraine) to another river town called vang vieng. it was mostly too hot to much of anything. but they have a booming tubing scene. so you throw yourself in a rubber innertube and the local kids give you a push (while hitching a ride for as long as they think they can get away with it) and you're off. along the way there are various bars and restaurants with rope swings and various sorts of sketchy things on the menus and if you stop they pull you in off the river with big bamboo poles.


jason and loraine


if you look closely, its me in a river. i have no idea who that guy is.

weatherwise, it is as hot as you may imagine from all those vietnam type movies. but it is also humid. so out of nowhere comes this downpour (i suppose you would call it a monsoon) but it is still hot. gross. i got caught in a huge monsoon with the bright idea that i would watch it from a hammock in a little bungalow. by the time it was all over, the bungalow was barely standing and i was huddled in with the bamboo, because at least it wouldn't break and become a wind propelled spear.
for now, i am writing from vientiane, the capital, but tonight i am off down south to a place called the four thousand islands. my plan is to beat the heat in the river while looking for those ugly pink river dolphins. then it is off to cambodia with me. perhaps i will write from there.